The Whole Truth: Can “blood boys” slow ageing, prolong life?

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has an elaborate self-care routine which includes ice baths, fasting all weekend, daily journaling, drinking something called “salt juice” and using a standing desk with a near-infrared bulb above it. (File photo: Reuters)

The tech order, especially in Silicon Valley, is obsessed with weight loss, longevity and “health span”. But who really wants to live that long except the tech elite? Silicon Valley’s current obsession is longevity—death, for them, is a problem to be solved. In 2017, a 33-year-old doctor named Jesse Karmazin started Ambrosia, a start-up with vampiric ambitions. Ambrosia was offering teen plasma to older people before it was closed down after an FDA warning in 2019. Leading up to the FDA decision, Dr Karmazin claimed that he had already treated 80 cohorts from and outside of Silicon Valley, and each of those plasma receivers paid the company $8,000 for a sitting. The company even released statements saying the people who had undergone the transfusions were feeling more energetic, and had started growing dark hair. But the claims were considered apocryphal and unethical.

In the epilogue of his staggering tome on the history, biology and mystery of the cell, The Song of the Cell, Pulitzer-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee dwells briefly on the moral framework that binds start-ups like Ambrosia. Mukherjee writes that Ambrosia, “supposedly rejuvenates the creaking but wealthy, shrivelling bodies of ageing billionaires”.

Ambrosia inspired many tech companies to raise funds to take forward the business of defying death. Retro Biosciences, Turn Biotechnologies, Gameto (for reproductive longevity in women), Neurotrack, Viome Life Sciences and Altos Labs are some big names in the US. Shift Biosciences, Humanity, GlycanAge, Rejuvenate Biomed and Genflow Biosciences are some of the big names in Europe. In India, the two start-ups that have made some noise in this field so far are Decode Age and Human Edge, both of which offer advanced health tests, offering preventive, personalized, and precision nutritional and medicinal recommendations. While all these companies have their mandate and treatment menu, all depend more or less on personalized cellular programming.

This desire to stay young forever began with the tech elite, forever in a cloak of invincibility. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have all poured money into some life-prolonging and anti-ageing research. Elon Musk has a contrarian view on this, but his megalomania is more legendary. In 2016, Musk founded the startup Neuralink, which develops technology that could merge people's brains with computers. Many tech CEOs have gruelling fitness regimes and intermittent fasting is more common among the tech aristocracy than eating—in other words, more joyless than life-affirming. Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, has an elaborate self-care routine which includes daily ice baths, fasting all weekend, daily journaling, drinking something called “salt juice” and using a standing desk with a near-infrared bulb above it.

Along with longevity, health startups and pharmaceuticals are equally invested in weight loss, as the brouhaha over the ethical and medical implications of the long-term use of a drug called Ozempic erupted recently. Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy are approved for type 2 diabetes and are given as self-injections once a week. These drugs magically help in shedding weight because they kill hunger significantly. Among celebrities who flaunted their post-Ozempic looks are comedian Amu Schumer and Musk himself. An avalanche of weight loss drugs is supposed to flood the market by the year-end.

This wish to preserve life as we know it, at the cost of dying, is profoundly human. In literature, death is a thing of beauty, a fuel for the regenerative cycle of nature and life, and hence sacred. Tech, as we know it today, is more excited by the determination to remain exactly as we are, forever. Immortality is a drug yet to be tested on us humans—and what could emerge if it is tested, is stuff of terrifying drama.